Well, I said I'd say something about music this time, so here goes:
I subscribe to Yahoo Music Unlimited. It has a million songs to choose from, many I'd rather not hear, and you can download them to your computer and portable music device (aka, Mp3 player).
So, I ponied up the 60 bucks, much to my wife's chagrin, and started loading up the hard drive. I also purchased a Creative Zen Touch 20 gig player, again the wife was chagrined, to store all the "subscribed music" I've downloaded. Great idea, right? Well, in theory anyway.
(seeing yesterday's rant/whine, you're probably wondering why it's free of cussing thus far. So am I)

The Creative Zen Touch (hereinafter referred to as the "Touch" I'm a lawyer as well, you know) was advertised as being compatable with MTP (media transfer protocol) files and would play subscription based music. Yahoo is a subscription service. In other words, I pay my 60 bucks (the price goes up to a whopping $120 a year November 1. Ain't I fucking lucky! ah, cussing) and I get the songs to use as I please for a year. I just can't burn them to a CD. That costs $.79 each or about $8 per CD. No matter, I'd planned to treat the songs as my personal whore and bend them over the nearest armchair and fuck them silly. Weird metaphor, or simile aside, I was subscribing only; not burning. Back to the Touch. It was supposed to be compatable with my hopes, dreams, plans. Ooops! It wasn't. I paid almost $200 for a player that would not do what I had hoped, and been told, it could do. I was pissed. Maybe just worried.

Everything changed this morning as I went to the Creative web site (Creative announced their quarterly profits were down 86% over last year; this added to my anxiety) and there it was: the firmware download I had waited for. The firmware that would allow me to listen to all my downloaded music for the next year. The MTP/Plays for Sure upgrade!!! Yipee. I downloaded. I updated. I synched my player to YMU. My battery ran out.

Bugger! (That was for you Karl, as my second official reader. Steve Stackpole was first. He's stronger, but you're British and that counts for something these days. I think Dan has read this as he told me to listen to a comedy CD called, "Quit your Crying, You Fucking Baby" by David Cross)

Being at work right now (I'm at lunch, so I'm not ignoring the brats I'm educating) without the charger, I'll have to wait until I get home so I can load up the subscribed music. Then it's non-stop with the Damned, the Modern Lovers, Buzzcocks, Devo, The Futureheads, Franz Fucking Ferdinand, The Kaiser Chiefs, and anything Dan suggests that I can download. Dan posts interesting choices on his website. Read them. www.theartofdansilver.com You won't regret it.
Problem is, Yahoo is lame when it comes to getting the licenses for some of these bands. I want to listen to Dillinger Escape Plan, but they don't got it. Shit. Being a cheap bastard, I'll wait. Anyway, I have 10 gigs of music ready to go and now power to use it. I'll get over it.

What I should have been writing about is the fact that most of my listening is stuck somewhere around 1987. Not much new out there I want to hear. I sure as hell am not listening to hip hop or rap (I understand they're two different genres, who knew?). My daughter, in her quest to become African-American (we're pretty damn pale around my house) listens to that crap, er music non-stop. Maybe I'm old, but the shit is horrible. I mean in indiscernable. Each song sounds like the other, except worse. No one is playing instruments because Pro Tools rules the studio. The singers are all over produced and synthesized to the point of sounding inhuman. Listen to Beyonce, if you can, and you'll hear it. Layer upon layer of crappy sound. Put it together and you get a hit single that makes your brain bleed.

My solution: Henry Rollins in the studio with one of these genius producers, say Pharrell Williams. Henry sits behind him and every time he tells a young singer, "That was great, I think we have a hit!" ol' Hank grabs the nearest heavy object and opens Pharrell's head; revealing as everyone expected, nothing. It's a fantasy, but it's all mine.

"We're not saying anything new here. We're just saying the same things over and over again, that need to be said until things get done."
-Astronaut Wally Shirra in The Right Stuff

I'm tired.